Hand of the Reaper
by Morgstang
Summary: Edward is diagnosed with an unknown terminal illness. Alphonse dies from unknown causes shortly after Ed's diagnosis and leaves Ed with crippling night terrors every night as his body and mind deteriorates. His brother haunting him every day. What does he do when several strangers only he can see show up and tell him that he can bring his brother back to life? But for a price?


**MAC EDITED THIS**

**No, not really. It's unedited, or it was looked at by me and there's bound to be mistakes. But yes. **

**So yes, I'm continuing HOTR. As many of you are messaging me about Forced, I'm sorry to tell you that I'm stuck on writing the ending and don't expect an ending any time soon. I'm sorry. But I do have other stories to look at and if you're interested check out my profile for story progress. I try to update it every time there's a change.**

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"Al?"

He felt like he couldn't breathe, a heavy pressure growing in his chest.

"Al, is that you? Are you there?"

It was so dark, he was lost in nothingness.

"_Alphonse_?! Answer me!"

Terror gripped his heart like a vice as he spun around, a dark figure standing right in front of him.

Something ominous.

"Who is that?!" He shouted, backing up quickly, shaky hands held out in front of him, a feeble effort at defense.

Thin hands reached out, grabbing a hold of his wrists, he attempted to fight back but a familiar voice calmed him.

"Brother, what's wrong? It's me!" The figure said, grinning at him. Ed stared for a moment, eyes starting to adjust to the darkness as his little brother's face materialized in front of him, smiling that same gentle smile he always wore.

"God, Al, you scared the hell out of me. Where are we?" Ed asked, relaxing his defensive stance as he looked around the darkness they were encased in.

Suddenly, the warm smile dissipated, a freezing feeling was spreading throughout his guts as he stared at those haunted black eyes.

_Al has gray eyes...Not black._

"You mean to tell me you don't know where we are? How can you not?"

Shaking his head, Ed reattempted pulling his arms out of Al's grip, "Come on, Al, you're freaking me out!"

In almost an instant, Al or whoever it was was standing next to him, mouth pressed against his ear. A chilly breath grazed across his face, caressing his skin as he was chilled to the bone. Arms wrapped around him holding him tight, paralyzing him.

In a warped voice, the thing standing next to him wheezed, sounding vaguely like Al.

"_Have you ever tasted Hell, Edward?"_

The screams were already ripping out of his throat before he even hit the floor, scrambling across the hardwood to the corner of his room, panting. Pressing his back into the corner where the two walls joined, he scanned the bedroom frightfully. With his teeth clenched tight to prevent himself from making another noise, Ed could feel the tears streaming down his face as he ran his hands through his hair, sobbing.

_Al's dead. Al's dead and he's not coming back. It wasn't real, it wasn't _real.

Footsteps creaked the wooden floor outside his door as his father stopped outside of his room, not knocking. Just listening.

Pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, he bit onto it, stifling the sobs so he could spare his father and himself from the embarrassment of yet another nightmare. Slowly, he calmed his breathing, listening to his father's retreating footsteps and the click of a bedroom door shutting down the hallway.

Hohenheim didn't know how or want to deal with his fucked up mess of a son, and Ed didn't blame him.

The sweat on his body was cooling against his skin, making him shiver violently as he started waking up more and the shadow remnants of his nightmare faded from his room, leaving it to stare blankly back at him, its white walls unthreatening. His stomach heaved uncertainly as he stood up, stripping his button up flannel shirt and dropping it on the floor, the long pants soon following, leaving him his boxers.

Straightening out his blankets, he quickly climbed into bed, wrapping himself into the heavy blankets to protect his chilled skin from the outside cool air. Even though his room was clear of any intruders, dark shadows still flitted in his peripheral vision, but he ignored them, staring at the wall on the other side of his room, still fearful of closing his eyes. Not daring to move, Ed shifted his eyes to look over at his alarm clock, blaring red numbers indicating that it was 3:39 am.

Sighing, he sat back up, staring out across his room towards the white wooden door. Fear still clung to him, holding tight despite his rational mind telling him he just had a nightmare (_again_) and he honestly needed to stop being scared of the dark, of his own _room_.

As he got out of his bed again, his legs nearly buckled as he made his way over to the door, making his way to the bathroom.

Hohenheim lay in his own bed, listening as his oldest son walked past his door, making his way for the bathroom. Every morning for the past two months always started like this. Edward would go to the bathroom around four in the morning, dry heave into the toilet, only sometimes would anything come up, and whatever did come up, Hohenheim was almost too afraid to know. He did find some trace amounts of blood tainted saliva on the toilet seat Ed had overlooked, but no matter what he asked Ed, he would refuse it was anything important and would storm off.

But he would refrain from arguing with Ed. The least he argued and fought, the least Ed would be sickened from the stress.

That was also another thing Edward had inherited from his parents, and it made Hohenheim sick with fear almost everyday. Trisha his wife, now passed for eight years, had died from an unknown terminal illness. The doctors were baffled, testing her in every aspect they could, the disease deteriorated her for two years until she finally passed away, he was almost relieved but it tore their family apart.

Trisha had insisted that Hohenheim continue his work, as he did research for a pharmaceutical company on cancer, and often stayed gone for weeks. His company placed four hours away from where they lived, he would have lived closer, but he wanted to keep his wife out of the tainted city air and keep his children in the rural village they were born in. He had immersed himself in his work, working on his own wife's tests, hoping that maybe he and his team would be able to find a treatment that worked. Of course they had tried many different treatments, but the testing on her biopsy killed the infected cells along with any cells surrounding it and they feared for her wellbeing.

So, instead she was prescribed with strong pain killers and she chose to stay at home with their sons, awaiting the inevitable.

Alphonse was their youngest son. Not so brash and loud as Edward, but equally intelligent. He was forgiving and calm, while Ed blamed their mother's death on Hohenheim on a near daily basis. That he should have been around for her, that he wasn't even there for her when she died, one of Hohenheim's biggest regrets in life, constantly thrown in his face. An exact copy of his own yellow eyes would glare out at him from across the room for months going on to years whenever they were in the same room. Only a few years ago did Ed stop with the petty insults and glares and chose to snap at him whenever he tried speaking to him. Alphonse was devastated at the loss of their mother, but he always tried comforting Hohenheim, telling him it was how she wanted to go, that she wanted him to continue his work and support Ed and him.

Then just a mere seven months ago, Al passed away suddenly. An autopsy didn't reveal anything specific, but they deduced that he had died from sudden cardiac arrest and suffocation. They believed the sudden heart stoppage shocked Al's lungs into failure, killing him within minutes.

It was possibly one of the worst days of Hohenheim's life. Even worse than his wife's death. This was sudden and unexpected. The strong pillar in their family ripped out from under them in the most cruel and unforgiving way possible.

Edward had been sick with his illness for a year, Alphonse helping him along with every aspect of it. Going (forcing Ed to go) to appointments with Ed, convincing him to eat, the only person Ed would _talk _to. Ed would only accept help from Al, and when the younger brother had died, Hohenheim thought Ed would hurt himself gravely in a moment's insanity. Ed was the one who first found Al, early in the morning before school. Al's bedroom was located next to Ed's and when Ed and Hohenheim realized that Al still hadn't come out of his room one morning, Ed went to go wake him up.

Taking in a deep sigh, Hohenheim raked a hand over his face as the shower turn on, rattling a few groaning pipes in the wall as water gushed through them, heating up. Every morning at four, Ed would shower. Right after shocking Hohenheim out of his sleep with a horrible fit of screaming and shouting and thrashing onto the floor. With Ed's room right next to his, he could hear every thud and sob made by his son. The first few times disturbed Hohenheim deeply, he even forced Ed into therapy, but nothing helped so he gave up on making him go.

Ed never told Hohenheim what he had night terrors about, but he could always assume. He would never forget the sound that came from the upstairs that morning when Ed went to get Al.

It still gave him nightmares of his own from time to time. He could remember knocking his chair over standing up from the kitchen table and running up the stairs, hearing the panicked shouts for him.

"_Dad! Oh my god, DAD! ALPHONSE!"_

He remembered rushing through the open doorway of Al's bedroom, Ed was gripping Al around the shoulders, shaking him. Al's lips were tinted blue, his face pale, foggy gray eyes staring up at the ceiling. Even though his mind told him he was gone, he was too far gone to be _saved_, he attempted CPR. Ed was digging into his jean pockets, calling 9-1-1, nearly screaming into the phone.

Ed was near maniacal when Hohenheim gave up on CPR, he scrambled over to keep it going, to perform it himself. Hohenheim had grabbed him, dragged him from the bedroom as Edward thrashed, his face and chest were pummeled by the weak hands of his son, of his only family left alive. His only family left alive who was also _dying_.

He was losing everyone in his _family_. He felt like crying, every day he felt like crying. When he woke up, when he saw those dull, sunken eyes of his last son, when he had to lay awake every morning, awoken by screaming and listen to the helpless heaves in the bathroom right behind the wall behind his head. But the tears had stopped coming. He dried up that well months ago, the last time he helped a sobbing and cowering Edward from the corner of his room. He didn't let his son see the tears as Ed scolded him for helping him. That he wasn't a child anymore and that he could handle a few stupid nightmares. That Hohenheim was _overreacting. _

The shower had stopped and Hohenheim closed his eyes again, listening to make sure that the younger blond didn't fall. Every day it seemed all of the energy and strength was slowly leaving his son, forcing him to stay home from work more and more, afraid that Edward might get hurt and not be able to get help.

Hearing the bathroom door open, he listened to the light footsteps go by his bedroom door again, a finalized noise sounded as the bedroom door next to his softly close.

A few hours later, Hohenheim was sitting at the kitchen table with a stone cold coffee, staring unseeingly through his mail. Ed was sitting across from him, eyelids darkened from fatigue, a hand resting on his cheek as he leaned his elbow on the tabletop, reading a book. All he did now was read. He always had a fondness of it as a child, but now it was all Hohenheim saw him do.

"Are you going to school this morning?" He asked, trying to have _some_ sort of conversation with the stubborn blond.

Golden eyes were unfazed as they continued staring at the open book before them, "Yeah, I'll go in after I eat."

"Rough night last night?"

"No."

"If you think I'm deaf, Edward, you can go ahead think of another one," Hohenheim said stiffly, flipping the page of an electric bill over.

That did it. Eyes flicked up at him and glared, upper lip curling in distaste, "It's none of your fucking business, old man."

"You will watch your _language_ under my roof, Edward. I'm only concerned."

"Concerned 'cuz I'm going to croak like Mom did?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You're just trying to make up for ignoring Mom. I'm not some remedial case you can do to make up for how you treated your wife-"

Slamming down the bill he was reading, Hohenheim stood up, grabbing his long overdue coffee and dumping it into the sink, untouched. Dropping the cup with a loud clang in the basin, he let his temper get the better of himself as he grabbed Edward by the upper arm and pulled him up out of the chair. The book clattered onto the table and his glare was met with one even more vicious.

"You were too young to know what was going on during that time. Your mother wanted me to work, I was looking for a _cure_, you can stop holding a childish grudge and stop being so _ungrateful-_"

"What have I to be grateful for?! Al and Mom are _dead_ and I'm left with _you_!" Ed scathed, yanking his arm from his Father's grip. "I'm going to die just like Mom did, I _know_ that, so stop pitying me!"

There were tears building up in his son's eyes and Hohenheim suddenly felt guilty as he rested his hand on top of the quivering blond head.

"Ed...I think we should go back to counseling-"

A rough hand shoved his away, as Ed backed up, picking his book up from the table.

"I'm leaving," He snapped, picking up an old backpack hanging from the back of his chair, Hohenheim recognized it was Al's with a sickening realization.

"Edward-"

"I'm _leaving_!"

With a final slam of the front door, Hohenheim stood there, unsure of what to do or who to call. He had talked to many, many people, but no one seemed to know what they were doing, or how to handle Edward. How did you handle a very sick teenager who hated every last fiber in your body, alone? He didn't dare use any force in case he hurt him, but if Edward was truly following his mother's path, in a few more months he wouldn't be able to storm out of the house like that, not without hurting himself.

Picking up his phone from the table he dialed a memorized number at the hospital psychiatric ward.


End file.
